But was the story accurate? And what steps did organizations take either to confirm its veracity or to gauge what effects their campaign might have in Iran? It appears that the answer to the second question is very little. By the weekend of July 23, officials at Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)--all of whom were seeking further information before issuing statements--were alarmed at how quickly the story had spread across gay websites, listservs and institutions. They were dismayed that HRC, the largest LGBT organization in the United States, would take such decisive action without seeking expert advice. In an interview with The Nation, Steven Fisher, HRC's communications director, acknowledged that they had not reached out to human rights groups but based their letter solely on news reports and blogs--all of which sourced their story back to the Outrage! press release. "We are in shock at how distorted this story has become and that we have reached the point where HRC would send a letter to the Secretary of State without doing research," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of IGLHRC.

As for the accuracy of the story itself, the Outrage! press release that incited this storm claims that neither the original ISNA story nor the first NCRI report on the incident mentions sexual assault. But it appears that Outrage! was working from a faulty translation. According to Hadi Ghaemi, Human Rights Watch's Iran researcher and a native Farsi speaker, the ISNA article was titled "Lavat beh Onf." Ghaemi translates the statement as "homosexual act by coercion," and Iranian lawyers he spoke to confirm that the expression amounts to a charge of homosexual rape.

Tatchell claims that Outrage! had the ISNA story translated by three separate Iranian dissidents, and he insists that it makes no mention of rape or force, though he indicated that that it was possible that HRW and Outrage! had examined different versions of the story. Several Farsi-speaking experts consulted by The Nation confirmed Ghaemi's translation of the ISNA article as it appears on their website. As for the NCRI story posted on July 20 (which urges the EU to "cut off all dialogue with the religious fascism ruling Iran"), Tatchell is technically correct that it doesn't mention rape or force. However, it also makes no reference to homosexuality and merely states, "the victims were charged with disrupting public order among other things." An article that appeared in the Mashhad daily newspaper Quds on the morning of the execution identified the crime as rape and included an interview with the father of the 13-year-old alleged victim as well as corroborating testimony from witnesses. Several sources in Iran confirmed that major Iranian media outlets (which do not, it should be noted, enjoy press freedom under the clerical regime) uniformly listed the charge as rape.

Based on evidence collected from lawyers and human rights activists and from Iranian news sources, Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Project at Human Rights Watch, concludes, "There is no evidence that this was a consensual act. The only reason to think this is what appears to be a mistranslation of the ISNA article. A whole tissue of speculation has been woven around mistranslations and omissions and this has been solidified into a narrative that this is a gay rights case."

Both Long and Ettelbrick expressed concern that interest in the case from some organizations and media outlets seems predicated on an identification of the teenagers as gay, and they worried that gay rights had in some cases been co-opted--intentionally or not--for other ideological purposes. "If you look at the pictures of these kids and see the terror in their eyes, does it become any less if they are gay or not gay, innocent or guilty? These kids were tortured. One was executed for crimes committed when he was a minor. Juvenile execution is wrong," said Long. In an e-mail addressed to members of the gay community, Ettelbrick wrote, "It's interesting that this case has suddenly drawn such a rapid and strong response when these abuses have been going on for years without a peep from US-based LGBT groups. Why now? Why just Iran?"

At least one of the gay organizations involved, HRC, seems exclusively interested in the incident as a matter of gay rights. When confronted with information from IGLHRC and HRW that the facts in this case were considerably more ambiguous than they originally appeared, HRC briefly removed the letter to Rice from its website (it is now back up). HRC's Steven Fisher told The Nation that they now "want Sec. Rice and the administration to find out exactly what happened and to take actions to make this information available." (A letter to Rice from US Representatives Barney Frank, Jan Schakowsky and Tom Lantos that expressed concerns over the "recent execution of two gay teenagers" made similar requests.)

When asked if HRC would continue to protest the executions if the rape charges proved accurate, Fisher said, "We would be relieved to learn that the charges of homosexual sex were wrong, and that this turned out to be a case of assault." As an organization that focuses "on issues specific to the LGBT community," Fisher said that HRC "does not have a position on the death penalty." In his second post on the hangings, Doug Ireland noted that the controversy around the hangings demonstrates that American gay organizations and media have "little experience or background in evaluating, reporting on, or mobilizing around" the "problems of same-sexers in foreign cultures" and that they lack a "perspective that situates gay oppression within the broader context of the challenge to human rights, or engage with human rights issues that are not specifically gay."

This sort of parochialism does not seem to underlie Outrage!'s role in the controversy. Tatchell, at least, is a committed gay and human rights activist who has been involved in campaigns for indigenous rights, opposed the war in Iraq and criticized the gay movement for prioritizing inclusion within the military. He twice attempted to perform citizen's arrests on Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe for human rights abuses including torture. But in recent years Tatchell has joined a chorus of voices that criticize the left for being soft on Islamic fundamentalism. Shortly after the London bombings, Tatchell signed the United Against Terror statement, which attacks "those who apologize for the terrorists and who misrepresent terrorist atrocities as 'resistance.'" Explaining his decision to sign the UAT statement, Tatchell wrote, "Today, the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values.... I used to be proud to call myself a leftist. Now I feel shame. Much of the left no longer stands for the values of universal human rights and international socialism."

Perhaps most saliently, Tatchell has used his prominence as a gay activist to place gay issues at the center of the discussion of the conflict between Western secular humanism and Islamic fundamentalism. Most recently, in a statement issued after the London bombings, Outrage! warned that "gay venues could be bombed by Islamic terrorists. All gay bars and clubs should introduce bag and body searches. Muslim fundamentalists have a violent hatred of lesbians and gay men." Tatchell and other members of Outrage! report that they have received death threats from Islamic fundamentalists, but did not offer any other evidence of a looming attack in their release. (In fact, the last time a gay bar was bombed in London, in Soho in 1999, the bomb was set by a white supremacist group.)

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next »

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.